The Paradoxical Nature of Negative Emotions
Click here for the audio version of this post
When was the last time you were overcome with jealousy? Encumbered by social comparison? Riddled with guilt or embarrassment? How many people do you hate in this world? What lengths would you go to watch them get what they deserve? If you pay close attention to your mind, you’ll realize its tendency to perseverate on the same unconstructive thoughts for hours, days, weeks, or longer.
There are good evolutionary reasons for this. When problems need to be solved, it pays to persistently deliberate about them until we get closure. But of course, we don’t always know whether a problem is solvable beforehand, so we apply this principle to every situation, even when they are outside of our control. It might be the case that negative emotions are evolutionary byproducts of our capacity for problem-solving. Indeed, some negative mood states are characterized by a highly analytical thinking style.
Negative emotions directed toward others can be similarly advantageous. In survival situations, it is more urgent that we act on fear or retaliation than ecstasy or compassion. We don’t always have the time to decide whether we should run from a lion or pet it. It is the same with reflective emotions like sadness or loneliness. When we need to resolve complex social problems in our lives, it’s good to have an emotion that makes such deliberations inescapable. For this reason, negative emotions are felt more strongly than positive ones and can be far more motivating.
Despite this, negative emotions don’t always lead to constructive action, especially in the emotional extremis. More often than not, we fixate on our emotions in maladaptive ways that exacerbate the valence of these emotions and ultimately work against our goals. Though highly analytical, the ruminating mind doesn’t show increased ability in problem-solving and instead makes our outlook on life grim, pessimistic, and cynical.
Let’s start with the more antisocial emotions first, such as anger, hate, and schadenfreude. If you are like me, you have probably visualized the deliverance of “instant karma”, like when we indulge in the fantasy of watching someone choking on their gum after smacking it around for ten minutes straight.
Of course, if this were to actually happen, we wouldn't think twice before providing aid to this person. When we engage in sadistic visualizations, we don't think of the aftermath, or how watching this would actually make us feel. It just feels good to envision a world where there are always consequences to one's actions, even if it’s absurdly disproportionate to the offense.
As far as our emotions are concerned, this practice only adds fuel to the fire. Although imagining bad things happening to bad people (or annoying people) feels good, it doesn’t make us feel any better. There are a few paradoxes here:
We typically don’t want bad things to happen to others, but sometimes it feels good to imagine it.
**Breaking Bad Spoiler incoming… skip to next paragraph if you haven’t seen the show** In Breaking Bad, after Walter White’s sister-in-law, Marie, finds out his secret, she confesses to her therapist that she spent hours the previous night researching different poisons, and what happens to people after they are exposed to them. Her therapist tells Marie that no situation is made better through the use of violence. Marie responds, “Don’t worry, I wouldn't hurt anybody... It just feels good to think about it.”
It’s easy to imagine terrible things happening to people, but it is harder to imagine how we’ll feel after misfortune strikes.
Although it may provide temporary satisfaction, imagining bad things happening to others does not ultimately diminish negative emotions.
I have met some pretty big assholes in my day. Usually, they are in some position of power, and in my darker moments, I imagine what it would be like to watch them lose it all. I might imagine them permanently damaging their reputation by making some factual error or social blunder. If you are like me in this regard (for your sake, I hope you aren't), you might, upon reflection, realize that this doesn't improve anything about how you feel about this person. If anything, it makes you that much more perturbed by their presence.
Not all negative emotions lead to malevolent thoughts. Sometimes, we simply feel saddened by the harsh realities of life. Assuming that you are a human, you have likely had moments where you feel unmotivated, uncertain, hopeless, or inadequate. And almost everyone besides, like, the coolest person ever, has been confronted with the fact that others don’t always prioritize us as much as we prioritize them.
To take a personal example, when I first moved into my own apartment, I was particularly susceptible to feeling lonely, which frequently triggered FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). When I saw my friends doing something fun, I felt a ping of jealousy, and my mind became crowded with potential reasons why I was left out. Oftentimes, there were good reasons why I was left out, such as that I was working, or that they were doing something that I have no interest in, or some other logistical issue.
But why was I ever under the impression that I should be included in everything that my friends do? I have a clear sense of what my boundaries are, but I have this implicit assumption that others don’t need boundaries. Even when innocuous explanations are readily available, I continue my search for the most painful one.
We continue our search for emotionally painful explanations, even when a more plausible and mundane one is readily available.
Most of us can acknowledge that we ruminate on our negative emotions far longer than is useful or necessary. Less of us are able to act on this insight. Instead, we seek out confirmatory evidence to validate how we are feeling. If you are sad, you will look for reasons why you should feel that way. It’s hard to admit when our feelings - or the time spent ruminating about them - are unjustified. Not only is rumination usually unhelpful, but it can also be counterproductive, leading us to engage in a sort of masochistic motivated reasoning. The more we repeat the same story in our minds, the more we become convinced of its veracity.
Common in all of these paradoxes is our tendency to ruminate on things that don’t need rumination. This ranges from reflecting on that time we told a joke that nobody laughed at, to worrying that those who we love most will eventually up and leave us. Rumination isn’t a solution to either of these cases. Reflecting on the past is only useful insofar as it helps us better plan for tomorrow. Ditto with ruminating about the present moment or future. Any additional rumination is unlikely to lead to anything besides self-torment.
We find unchangeable events most worthy of reflection despite their being unchangeable.
It might come as no surprise that rumination has been empirically shown to prolong emotional states such as sadness, anger, anxiety, and depression. It also exacerbates these emotions, making the present emotion more pronounced. Of course, taking the time to process negative emotions can be beneficial. These thought processes can provide closure and can help to outline clear actionable steps moving forward. But as mentioned in the examples above, rumination does little in the way of solving our problems, especially when the only real solution is to move on.
There is an allure to feeling your feelings, and sometimes this is useful, such as when grieving a loss. When we aren’t given enough time to process and come to terms with grief, we will frequently revisit it to the point where it becomes entangled into negative perceptions about oneself, such as “I will never get over this sadness.”, and a pessimistic worldview, as seen in Mr. Meeseeks’ Slogan from Ricky and Morty, “existence is pain.” The only way to come to terms with death is to accept that it’s an inevitable part of life.
In cases like these, negative emotions are often too potent to be ignored. But we can choose how much time we spend with them. Emotional suppression, that is, attempting to hide, inhibit, or reduce negative emotion - is probably the most commonly used method, but it provides only a temporary fix. A far more effective method, called cognitive reappraisal, works by reinterpreting negative situations in a way that changes their meaning or impact.
For example, when we walk by a neighbor’s house and their dog starts barking at us, we forget about it as soon as we no longer hear the barking. But if we have a rude encounter with someone at the grocery store, it might stick with us for the rest of the day. In the case of the dog, we know that the barking has little to do with us as people and more to do with the feelings of the dog. Similarly, the encounter at the grocery store says nothing about us as people and more about the other person. So why not shrug them off the same way we do the barking dog? Remind yourself that not everything is happening to you, things are just happening, and you just happen to be there.
Another method when dealing with difficult people is to imagine how they became who they are. Sometimes, they might have just had a bad day. Or maybe their personality is a reflection of their childhood growing up, in which case they were the biggest victim. Or maybe their antisocial behavior is a result of a mental disorder. Whatever it is, nobody makes themselves entirely. Understanding this can make you feel compassion for even the most loathsome souls.
These are powerful reappraisal tactics for managing negative emotions, but there are others, such as (1) making a joke out of ugly encounters, or (2) thinking about your emotions objectively in the way a doctor or programmer would. Think not: I am sad because of this and that; Think: I can tell I am feeling sad because of the heavy feeling in my chest and the pressure behind my eyes. What might the function of this feeling be? One way of combining these two approaches was popularized by William Irvine. He advocates that we ask “What the Func?” when we are feeling down, which is a cheeky way of asking what the function of a negative thought is, rather than constantly replaying it in our minds. Finally, you might also try to identify a silver lining in bad experiences. What can I learn from this? How might this present a chance for growth?
We often feel deflated because we are craving something that is just out of reach. It is not a new insight that desire is the root of all suffering. The Buddha recognized this millennia ago. Our desires are either unattainable, in which case we are wanting that which we do not have access to; or attainable, in which case we experience temporary gratification until we adapt and begin to desire the next thing. Neither of these cases is conducive to a happy life. A better approach is to remind yourself why you wanted the things that you currently have. View your old laptop, your small apartment and all its appliances, and your long-term partner through the eyes of yourself when you first encountered these things. In other words, find ways to want what you have.
Oftentimes when we are ruminating about our lives, we are looking for closure that would otherwise be suspended and unattainable. However, more often than not, rumination does not lead to a desired resolution. While deep contemplation is useful for problem-solving, overthinking can impair these abilities, leading us to act impulsively and make counterproductive choices. Overthinking can also impact our worldview, fueling pessimism, cynicism, and despair. There is room for both “feeling the feels” and analyzing them objectively. In fact, both are essential and part of the same process. By recognizing the paradoxical nature of negative emotions, and that we often have to go against what feels right to overcome them, we can resist the masochistic tendency to dwell on things beyond our control.
Social
Twitter: @RyanBruno7287
Mastodon: https://mstdn.social/@ryanbruno